All For Not - Wednesday

Page 91

“Morella, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in your dorm room?” I look up, glowing eyes covered with fathers thick tinted shades, “what on earth are you wearing those for…”

She hums when I don't answer her, singular brow arched and raised as she crosses her arms over her lower ribcage in her usual stance, “your sister told me what happened, do you have anything to say?”

My body stalls like a car before my head tilts as I observe her, “No,” I say, “I am unaware of what has supposedly happened.”

Her eyes narrow, “Does setting up a trap ring any kind of bells in that skull?” As soon as the words leave her mouth I stand, “Morella, if you cannot settle your differences with Wednesday and control yourself then I only see two outcomes to this.”

“I had no part in that trap,” I say and she shakes her head disapprovingly, “I do not appreciate the lying young lady. Wednesday and I have talked and if you are unable to respect her and let go of these silly actions that are frankly disturbing the family then your father and I will have no choice but to remove you from Nevermore.”

I feel my body weaken in a way, deflating at her words yet heating up at what she was deluded to. Swallowing I speak, tone bland and lacking warmth, “Why do you say I am to blame for a trap set by another? You wouldn’t dare to give me even a chance of word or the benefit to explain what happened?”

“That is enough, I have no need for this foolishness, I have much worse to worry about, and why are you here at all?”

My nose twitches at her words and I stare as I step away, backing up, hatred brewing deep in my bones beneath flesh and blood, “Your daughter is being followed around, stalked to the farthest point where they’ve set a trap in her closet…”

Growing angrier I flare up, glasses drooping on my face as my body grows hot forcing the room to do the same as if I was a living heater built for it. “Wednesday is the reason I was shot with an arrow to the heart this morning and yet you blame me? You take her word without hearing a single thing from me? Is it still of my own fault, or is it just that you’d rather take your real daughter's side to try and fix your fractured bond Morticia?”

She had been reeling back slowly but surely with the way my anger grew and the poison fell from my lips but her eyes widened and teared up when I had said her name and what was undoubtedly an insult to her parental judgments.

Then, she suddenly slaps me, leaving me startled.

She strikes me across the face, her palm hitting my cheek hard before her fingers land and glide across my skin in a clear sting, getting my cheek and my nose in one blow even with her nails. My head whips to the side and I freeze to my spot.

Blinking once, twice, thrice times I shudder with anger and turn away completely as she gasps and pulls back. She cradles her hand, singed by my skin yet also in shock she had done such a thing.

My back faces her, glasses gone as they’d flown across the floor from the hit. My hand lifts and I touch my face, anger stalling before it bursts and I feel like screaming at everything until there is nothing left around me. Instead I become overwhelmed, body lighting up like driftwood in a beach fire as my talons grow out and I scratch down my cheek hard shredding the skin, ripping through it and splattering fiery blood onto the tiled floor of the cottage's kitchen out of necessity.

My breaths ragged as the pain makes my fire dim and lets me calm down some, avoiding setting her on fire while I lean my head back slightly and dig my talons into the palms of my hands. My eyes shut for a moment and when I open them I see Pugsley, the boy dropping a glass jar filled with potpourri onto the floor causing it to splinter and shatter, scattering across the tile as he stares at me in stunned silence.